I'm not saying that it can't be true. I am saying that it isn't reliable. And it isn't.

Memory is notoriously imperfect. People also tend to embellish.

Aileen, I watch a Sky programme called Bones about a pathologist who specialises in just that - bones - . Her name is Dr Temperence Brennan and she works usualy with an FBI officer and a phorensic team from the Jefferson Institute - fiction but nevertheless fascinating. The things that she says remind me exactly of the things Clydey says. Nothing unsubstantiated by science or having its roots in 'feelings', especially inexplicable ones, can possibly be taken into account in any form of reckoning whatsoever. I dread to think what will happen to his thought processes should he ever fall completely and utterly in love. I'm not criticising him in any way - but that is just how I see him - sorry James.

Aileen, I watch a Sky programme called Bones about a pathologist who specialises in just that - bones - . Her name is Dr Temperence Brennan and she works usualy with an FBI officer and a phorensic team from the Jefferson Institute - fiction but nevertheless fascinating. The things that she says remind me exactly of the things Clydey says. Nothing unsubstantiated by science or having its roots in 'feelings', especially inexplicable ones, can possibly be taken into account in any form of reckoning whatsoever. I dread to think what will happen to his thought processes should he ever fall completely and utterly in love. I'm not criticising him in any way - but that is just how I see him - sorry James.

I think she's a brilliant character, so I take it somewhat as a compliment. The way she thinks is an exaggeration of the way I think, at least to some extent. However, that has nothing to do with how I relate to the people I care about. That is simply an epistemological approach. You don't know me. I'm not cold or emotionless, Jan. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who would more readily sacrifice their own well-being for the well-being of others.

Interesting to read about people's experiences but I must say I'm sceptical. Having had several close family members die recently I'm so disappointed I don't even dream about them. I don't feel them at all. Sad.

I'm not a big believer in these things, but I do think odd things happen sometimes. The night my Grandad died, I was at home asleep and my Mum was at the hospital and I woke up randomly in the middle of the night at the exact time that I later found out he passed away...

I've known a few people who have had similar experiences. I've had them too.

One Sunday afternoon I was in a glasshouse in Edinbugh's Botanic Garden where there was a small pond. I looked across the pond and saw my Dad standing there. The image faded after a few moments, and I knew something was wrong. The nearest phone box was out of order so it was a while before I got back to my flat and could phone my Mum, who told me that Dad had died suddenly from a heart attack. It was at roughly the same time that I had "seen" him beside the pond.

I also woke up during the night at the exact time my mother passed away, and was sitting on a bus when I began to feel very uneasy about a close aunt who I knew was undergoing a hip replacement operation that day. I heard a man's voice telling me she had died. When I phoned the hospital the male staff nurse told me she had suffered a massive heart attack about half and hour earlier, just at the time of my experience.

I think she's a brilliant character, so I take it somewhat as a compliment. The way she thinks is an exaggeration of the way I think, at least to some extent. However, that has nothing to do with how I relate to the people I care about. That is simply an epistemological approach. You don't know me. I'm not cold or emotionless, Jan. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who would more readily sacrifice their own well-being for the well-being of others.

James, I somehow felt that, despite the tone of your comments, you're a very sensitive person but sadly that's the problem with websites like this. How people come across in print may well be totally different from how we would find them if we got to know them in the flesh.

No, it isn't. No one's memory is perfect. It doesn't matter whether you say that you haven't embellished, it's a known fact that people do embellish when it comes to this stuff. They focus on what supports what they want to think and they ignore what doesn't. Cold readers have demonstrated this on people who think they are being read by a psychic.

Derren Brown perfectly highlighted how people are fooled by cold reading in one of his shows.

Having now discovered what cold reading is, I'm not in the least surprised. I've always been highly sceptical about mediums. Apart from a very few people who do naturally possess spiritualist qualities (and a late friend of mine certainly did), these individuals are disgraceful charlatans who manipulate their audiences, very often vulnerable folk who've suffered a recent bereavement and who are therefore very open to suggestion. I'd already read articles about how these people operate. It's obscene.

However, the incidents I've related did not involve a medium but were experienced directly by myself. That's the difference. OK, memory may not be 100% perfect, but nothing can alter the fact that these things did actually happen to me. For whatever reason, some people are more "open" to these experiences than others. Hence there are those who will go through life experiencing nothing like this, while there are those, at the other end of the scale, who can truly be called "psychic" and for whom these experiences are part and parcel of their daily lives.

I think she's a brilliant character, so I take it somewhat as a compliment. The way she thinks is an exaggeration of the way I think, at least to some extent. However, that has nothing to do with how I relate to the people I care about. That is simply an epistemological approach. You don't know me. I'm not cold or emotionless, Jan. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who would more readily sacrifice their own well-being for the well-being of others.

Apart from middle-class, self-employed people who don't subscribe to your world view.

BTW, haven't trawled all the way through this thread, but would like to say that I have seen a ghost.

I used to work and live in an old hospital. Bear in mind that the room I slept in was incredibly dark. The only window looked out onto an unlit courtyard. One night, my girlfriend and I were woken by something above the bed. She said 'What's that?'.

I was half-asleep, but I soon jolted awake when I looked up. There, about three feet above our heads, was what can only be described as a green orb. It was hovering and moving gently. I'd have dismissed it as a dream if I'd been on my own - but I wasn't. I ran over to the window to see if there were any lights I could attribute it to - but there was nothing. We snapped on the light sharpish.

The next night in the hospital bar, I mentioned it to a lady who'd lived in the hospital for over 20 years. She told me that the very room I lived in had been the site of a terrible event. The hospital used to be a workhouse. Back in the 20s, a young girl had got pregnant out of marriage. Not being able to live with the shame, she'd thrown herself from my window. The block had been known to be haunted by her ghost ever since.

I was spooked and moved out soon afterwards. In the meantime, it was the 1988 Seoul Olympics, televised at night. Unable to put the light out, I'd come back from work, sleep from 5.30 to 9.00-ish, then watch the Games all night.

I used to work and live in an old hospital. Bear in mind that the room I slept in was incredibly dark. The only window looked out onto an unlit courtyard. One night, my girlfriend and I were woken by something above the bed. She said 'What's that?'.

I was half-asleep, but I soon jolted awake when I looked up. There, about three feet above our heads was what can only be described as a green orb. It was hovering and moving gently. I'd have dismissed it as a dream if I'd been on my own - but I wasn't. I ran over to the window to see if there were any lights I could attribute it to - but there was nothing. We snapped on the light sharpish.

The next night in the hospital bar, I mentioned it to a lady who'd lived in the hospital for over 20 years. She told me that the very room I lived in had been the site of a terrible event. The hospital used to be a workhouse. Back in the 20s, a young girl had got pregnant out of marriage. Not being able to live with the shame, she'd thrown herself from my window. The block had been known to be haunted by her ghost ever since.

I was spooked and moved out soon afterwards. In the menatime, it was the 1988 Seoul Olympics, televised at night. Unable to put the light out, I'd come back from work, sleep from 5.30 to 9.00-ish, then watch the Games all night.

Believe in ghosts? You bet.

THAT is a great ghost story .... what were you working at in an old hospital? Or do you mean that it used to be a hospital and had been converted to something else?

No, it was a very old hospital with a mental health unit. It was still a hospital. A creepy old one. Lots of hospitals have staff quarters for nurses. I worked in HR, but they gave me a room. The wrong one.